Meeting of October 26, 2021

good afternoon welcome the october 26th meeting of hardin county fiscal court i'd remind you this is a voting meeting if you have cell phones please turn them off or put them in vibrate mode we'll begin with the roll call if you would in a stalling wiseman here thompson here ronnie goodman yeah king here judge barry here easter doug goodman here william here playing here mr klim will is an invocation miss williams in the pledge if you'll please stand with me the most gracious and loving the heavenly father we thank you for the many blessings of this day and father we uh we just come praising your holy name and father we just uh lift up our country and we looked up those that are standing guard all over the world to protect the freedoms that we uh cherish so uh so richly in this nation father we asked her special blessings on first responders across our nation as well father as we go forward in this meeting we just ask that you give us wisdom and you give us patience father and you just give us a vision for this community that we might do the right things and say the

right things uh to benefit all of our citizens of harvard leading guide and direct us and all the things we say and do in your son jesus name i pray amen amen please join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all first on the agenda today is department and office reports and the first one is the hardin county coroner dr lee afternoon judge members court by monthly report from uh august and september and we're still staying busy unfortunately yeah i see you stay pretty busy yes sir too much yep you have to click over there robin okay about the august uh

100 1000 excuse me 103 cases and the breakdown as you see accidental and then natural and suicide quite a few accidents at my 10 as you see overdoses and again i think from last year i think we're about doubled our overdoses still amazing to me what what people do to their bodies with with the drugs but a couple of car accidents and hyperthermia naturals again are the largest group of our cases and there's one person dying off the bridge their suicide and the next slide shows those obvious like pie charts you see the blue color there the major part being the natural deaths and uh over 90 usually we're up around that figure next slide will be the september numbers we jumped up there this past month unbelievable as bill just alluded to 153 cases had six accidents and including the overdoses and the one car accident had another homicide

and 142 naturals and again those naturals sometimes you might think we don't have to do much but a lot of times that involves a lot of investigation just to rule out something some foul play or something a little unusual and then three suicides gunshot and uh overdoses and then the next slide being the pie chart and the naturals up around over 90 percent and you see the breakdown of percentages on the other categories and then the slider you've heard me say this is my favorite slide i think just shows that progression over the years it still amazes me that cases climb i know our population has increased i don't know what the uh are the numbers out on the census judge i don't know if they are but they're not broke down locally in the counties yet but okay but uh again our total numbers there get my cheaters on here 898 cases it's a year to date so that's through september 30th and back in 2017 with 485 so it just continues to increase next slide will be the breakdown of the manner of death that's uh and that's excluding the category of

natural as you've seen in the past accident homicides and suicides and accidents again high homicide just one less than last year year to date i think one or maybe two less suicides about where we were last year so next slide will be that reference to the overdose and the drug deaths and shaina has a you see an asterisk on the 2021 numbers that we haven't i'm not sure how many cases we have pending the ruling of overdose from being a suicide or an accidental overdose so that number will actually be more than 42 if you're looking at the total overdose deaths for this kind of this period of time through september next slide as i've told you before that's the busy slide maybe a lot of made out of maybe i'll break that down to two slides but in the middle category the cremations continues to be a larger number i mean i don't know if that's partly due to the cost of funerals or people's wishes and cultural differences

what have you but and that usually requires some investigation too to rule out maybe a natural death and a foul play we we need to know what the circumstances are before we sign the paper the corner in kentucky is required to sign a provisional report of death before any cremation is done and uh kind of makes me wonder to judge over the last 30 years how many times i might have been tricked or fooled and had somebody cremated that we there may have been something going on that we weren't aware of but i hope we've done a good job in 30 years and just read across the bottom there's autopsy numbers and um you see last year in the 18 this year through september i don't know if that four is a i'm sure that's an error yeah what what's that some what do you say i don't know if that's it's bigger than it's taller than the redstone but i don't know what to i'll have to get that corrected folks the quethos still low on the right side of the large columns of the cremations and about the same for the county cremations and then the last two categories shows that transportation was the corner transport

or the ems transports for us and we continue to increase our numbers with our vehicles being used and again that frees up the ems for the taking care of the live folks they still like to think we had a case study that maybe pat worked and double fatality on the scene and just to clear up the scene real quickly the ems transported one of the two and then we transported the other ones so they still helped us out anybody here from umass too okay next slide the residency of the decedents and uh getting the elizabethtown area leads because the population and the various things where the hospitals and nursing homes and so forth 44 of our desks are residents of the elizabethtown and you see it break down them other incorporated areas and then the unincorporated and out of state usually refers to maybe folks that possibly on the interstate that are from out of state or out of the county and that completes my part unless anybody has any questions are there any questions for dr lee thank you george appreciate the good job thank you

welcome next we'll hear from the hardin county sheriff sheriff john ward good afternoon judge barry and mad fritz county club county attorney and everyone else the sheriff's office report starting with the law enforcement for august and september had 213 arrests 311 citations issued 194 warrants so 854 civil process 1498 complaint calls 117 accidents investigated 74 criminal cases 2716 other activities 526 school safety checks 126 warnings issued 2063 attempts to serve in office operations we had 87 records checks 291 carrying concealed weapons 1272 vehicles inspected